17 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
American poet and feminist theorist who wrote at the intersection of Blackness, womanhood, and lesbianism — one of the founding voices of intersectional feminism.
American journalist and socialist feminist who immersed herself in minimum-wage labor to write Nickel and Dimed — and who wrote influential critiques of positive thinking ideology.
American historian and social critic who developed a communitarian critique of liberal individualism and consumer capitalism — arguing that both left and right had abandoned the traditions and virtues sustaining democratic life.
Rousseau's 1755 Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men — arguing that natural humans are innocent and equal, that the invention of private property created inequality, and that civilization is the history of compounding injustice built on this original theft.
Irish playwright who wrote Pygmalion, Major Barbara, Heartbreak House, and Man and Superman — the most important dramatist after Shakespeare in the English language — and whose plays are simultaneously social criticism (capitalism, war, medicine, marriage) and philosophical comedy.
H. G. Wells was an English writer who invented scientific romance — 'The Time Machine', 'The War of the Worlds', 'The Invisible Man' — and became the founding figure of modern science fiction.
Mark Twain was an American author and humorist whose Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer defined American vernacular literature and social satire.
Ivan Goncharov's 1859 Russian novel about Ilya Oblomov — a Russian nobleman so overcome by inertia that he cannot bring himself to get out of bed — which became the defining literary treatment of paralysis, procrastination, and the failure to engage with life.
French revolutionary group and journal (1948-1965) co-founded by Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort, providing the earliest systematic critique of Soviet Communism as bureaucratic capitalism from a left perspective.
Victor Hugo's 1831 Gothic Romantic novel set in 15th-century Paris — following Quasimodo the bell-ringer, Esmeralda the dancer, and the archdeacon Frollo — which also argued passionately for the preservation of Gothic architecture against modernization.
Thorstein Veblen's 1899 satire of upper-class American consumption — which coined 'conspicuous consumption' and 'pecuniary emulation' — and argued that leisure and wasteful spending signal social status to inferior classes, driving economic behavior more than utility.
Norwegian-American economist and sociologist — author of The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) — who coined 'conspicuous consumption' and 'conspicuous leisure' — the founder of institutional economics and the most savage social critic in American economic thought.
American journalist and novelist — founder of New Journalism — author of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man in Full, I Am Charlotte Simmons, and The Right Stuff — who created the most important American journalism genre of the 20th century.
Heather Mac Donald's 2023 critique of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) policies in American institutions, arguing that race-conscious decision-making in hiring, admissions, and arts funding undermines standards of excellence and produces demonstrable harms in medicine, the arts, and public safety.
The philosophical and sociological tradition developed by the Frankfurt School — combining Marxist social analysis with Freudian psychology, Hegelian dialectics, and the goal of human emancipation.
Herbert Marcuse's 1964 critique of advanced industrial society — arguing that capitalism has absorbed the possibility of genuine opposition by satisfying false needs and creating 'repressive tolerance.'
American author and feminist intellectual best known for The Beauty Myth (1990), a landmark feminist critique of beauty standards. In later years became controversial for heterodox positions on COVID policy, vaccine mandates, and civil liberties, moving away from mainstream progressive positions.